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Friday, April 17, 2009

Swedish Courts - The Pirate Bay: "Guilty"

[caption id="attachment_1986" align="alignright" width="223" caption="With the four defendents of The Pirate Bay found guilty? Does this mean the end of it? ...Probably not."][/caption]

Honestly this verdict didn't come as a surprise to me. The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) as well as every association across the globe that has their copyrighted materials illegally distributed went up against the Pirate Bay crew.

The verdict announced April 17th claims that four defendants:

Peter Sunde (alias: brokep)

Fredrik Neij (alias: TiAMO)

Gottfrid Svartholm (alias Anakata)

Carl Lundström

All guilty, and each of them must pay must pay $905,000 in damages. ($3,620,000 total) What's interesting is the Swedish court did not believe the music and motion industry suffered that much in damages, yet they ordering the four defendants to pay it regardless.

The judge claimed that the four defendants were aware of the copyrighted material being shared on their websites, and worked as a team to help distribute it. This logic is what the court chose to take and based their verdict on that.

Peter Sunde said that he did not expect any jail time, and claimed that the verdict was 'unreal.' When he was asked about the fines he said: "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay if we could. If I would have money I would rather burn everything I owned."

Does this verdict mean the end of the line for them? Nope... There will be appeals which will stagnate the final outcome. Both sides have until May 9th 2009 to file their appeal to Sweden's higher court.

Peter Sunde went on saying that this verdict does not mean the end of The Pirate Bay. The defendants were on trial − not the site.

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About Me

Mitalis.com is a blog focused around my personal endeavors and things I find interesting worth posting and talking about.
This blog is mainly a hobby of mine, and some of the posts or topics you see here on Mitalis.com are things that I feel are important enough for people whom share my interests.
A perfect example:
Dealing with copy protection on video games. As a gamer, I think DRM is one of the worst things any publisher can ever tack on to their games. The only thing DRM does is punish those whom purchase their products legitimately.
Where as some of my other posts, (mostly the video posts) are things I found on the internet that I find humorous.